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Full-Text Articles in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Raising Dielectric Permittivity Mitigates Dopant-Induced Disorder In Conjugated Polymers, Meenakshi Upadhyaya, Michael Lu-Díaz, Subhayan Samanta, Muhammad Abdullah, Keith Dusoe, Kevin R. Kittilstved, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Zlatan Akšamija Jan 2021

Raising Dielectric Permittivity Mitigates Dopant-Induced Disorder In Conjugated Polymers, Meenakshi Upadhyaya, Michael Lu-Díaz, Subhayan Samanta, Muhammad Abdullah, Keith Dusoe, Kevin R. Kittilstved, Dhandapani Venkataraman, Zlatan Akšamija

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Conjugated polymers need to be doped to increase charge carrier density and reach the electrical conductivity necessary for electronic and energy applications. While doping increases carrier density, Coulomb interactions between the dopant molecules and the localized carriers are poorly screened, causing broadening and a heavy tail in the electronic density-of-states (DOS). The authors examine the effects of dopant-induced disorder on two complimentary charge transport properties of semiconducting polymers, the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity, and demonstrate a way to mitigate them. Their simulations, based on a modified Gaussian disorder model with Miller-Abrahams hopping rates, show that dopant-induced broadening of the …


Engineered Nanoparticles For Site-Specific Bioorthogonal Catalysis: Imaging And Therapy, Riddha Das Mar 2020

Engineered Nanoparticles For Site-Specific Bioorthogonal Catalysis: Imaging And Therapy, Riddha Das

Doctoral Dissertations

Bioorthogonal catalysis offers a strategy for chemical transformations complementary to bioprocesses and has proven to be a powerful tool in biochemistry and medical sciences. Transition metal catalysts (TMCs) have emerged as a powerful tool to execute selective chemical transformations, however, lack of biocompatibility and stability limits their use in biological applications. Incorporation of TMCs into nanoparticle monolayers provides a versatile strategy for the generation of bioorthogonal nanocatalysts known as “nanozymes”. We have fabricated a family of nanozymes using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as scaffolds featuring diverse chemical functional groups for controlled localization of nanozymes in biological environments, providing unique strategies for …


Engineering Nanomaterials For Imaging And Therapy Of Bacteria And Biofilm-Associated Infections, Akash Gupta Oct 2019

Engineering Nanomaterials For Imaging And Therapy Of Bacteria And Biofilm-Associated Infections, Akash Gupta

Doctoral Dissertations

Infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria pose a serious global burden of mortality, causing thousands of deaths each year. The “superbug” risk is further exacerbated by chronic infections generated from antibiotic-resistant biofilms that are highly resistant to available treatments. Synthetic macromolecules such as polymers and nanoparticles have emerged as promising antimicrobials. Moreover, ability to modulate nanomaterial interaction with bacterial cellular systems plays a pivotal role in improving the efficacy of the strategy. In the initial studies on engineering nanoparticle surface chemistry, I investigated the role played by surface ligands in determining the antimicrobial activity of the nanoparticles. In further study, …


Role Of Rigidity And Flexibility Of Functional Groups Within The Interior Of Supramolecular Assemblies And Their Implications, Oyuntuya Munkhbat Mar 2018

Role Of Rigidity And Flexibility Of Functional Groups Within The Interior Of Supramolecular Assemblies And Their Implications, Oyuntuya Munkhbat

Doctoral Dissertations

Engineering of supramolecular assemblies at molecular level renders functional nanomaterials that present explicit response to certain environmental changes. Systematic structure-property correlation studies will unravel the fundamental design constraints of these functional nanomaterials that fulfill the emergent need. This dissertation will primarily focus on understanding the role of rigidity and flexibility of functional groups within amphiphilic assemblies and employing this basic concept in drug delivery and diagnostics applications. Supramolecular assemblies formed by amphiphilic dendrimers and polymers are preferred for this study as they exhibit high thermodynamic stability and structural flexibility. The role of aromatic interaction on the unimer-aggregate dynamic equilibrium was …


Complex Coacervate-Based Materials For Biomedicine, Sarah L. Perry, Whitney C. Blocher Jan 2016

Complex Coacervate-Based Materials For Biomedicine, Sarah L. Perry, Whitney C. Blocher

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publication Series

There has been increasing interest in complex coacervates for deriving and trans- porting biomaterials. Complex coacervates are a dense, polyelectrolyte-rich liq- uid that results from the electrostatic complexation of oppositely charged macroions. Coacervates have long been used as a strategy for encapsulation, par- ticularly in food and personal care products. More recent efforts have focused on the utility of this class of materials for the encapsulation of small molecules, pro- teins, RNA, DNA, and other biomaterials for applications ranging from sensing to biomedicine. Furthermore, coacervate-related materials have found utility in other areas of biomedicine, including cartilage mimics, tissue culture scaffolds, …